Another American Adventure: winter

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

winter

It's definitely winter now. Cars routinely need the snow and ice cleared off of them, and my car is starting to look like one of those dirty winter cars. 14 degrees now, going down to 7 tonight. There are little hints of sunshine through the day, but it can turn into a blizzard in a moment's notice. I left this morning to go to my Centering Prayer group and the grocery and it looked like it was going to be one of those sunny winter days. But I drove home through a blizzard! In Florida, a few clouds come along for a few minutes, but it is mostly sunny. Here, a little sunshine can come along, but it's mostly cloudy.

The bonsai on the porch is in its dormant stage, but I'm not sure how long we can leave it out there.

2 comments:

BarbaraJanuary 3, 2012 at 1:18 PM
When I lived in Rochester, I noticed how cloudy the winters were. It must be proximity to the Great Lakes. Here I love the bright blue skies on sunny winter days. It sparkles. When the clouds return, a certain pewter-grey shade of cloud, then snowfall is coming. I believe we expect some tonight.
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beth cioffolettiJanuary 3, 2012 at 3:18 PM
I notice that the NYC area is brighter too ( and a little warmer than here). My cousin says that the reflection of the sun off the water makes things "lighter" there.
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"In those first days, people said, a squirrel could run the long length of Pennsylvania without ever touching the ground. In those first days, the woods were white oak and chestnut, hickory, maple, sycamore, walnut, wild ash, wild plum, and white pine. The pine grew on the ridgetops where the mountains' lumpy spines stuck up and their skin was thinnest.

"The wilderness was uncanny, unknown. Benjamin Franklin had already invented his stove in Philadelphia by 1753, and Thomas Jefferson was a schoolboy in Virginia; French soldiers had been living in forts along Lake Erie for two generations. But west of the Alleghenies in western Pennsylvania, there was not even a settlement, not even a cabin. No Indians lived there, or even near there.

"Wild grapevines tangled the treetops and shut out the sun. Few songbirds lived in the deep woods. Bright Carolina parakeets - red, green, and yellow - nested in the dark forest. There were ravens then, too. Woodpeckers rattled the big trees' trunks, ruffed grouse whirred their tail feathers in the fall, and every long once in a while a nervous gang of empty-headed turkeys came hustling and kicking through the leaves - but no one heard any of this, no one at all."

Annie Dillard, An American Childhood.